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CC: So let's talk about your mom now. Why don't you do the same thing, give us her name and where she was born.

MM: Okay. Her name is Shizuko Oiye, well, Shizuko Kikuchi Oiye, Kikuchi was her maiden name. In Colorado when she started school, I think, they called her Mary, as was very common. So you'll find a lot of people, a lot of women her age in Japanese who got the name Mary. Oh, my dad was called Tommy, which was also very common. But anyway, what did you want me to do?

CC: When was she born?

MM: Oh, she was born November 14, 1922.

CC: And then do you want to tell us a little bit about her life, maybe growing up, I know you mentioned that she did have to go back to Japan.

MM: Yes. That was a very bad experience for her. I mean, school was great, she did very well in school, but her mom died shortly after she went to Japan. And her father remarried this woman who was a bitch. Sorry, but she was, and she treated her like, you know, you hear these stories of stepmothers, she proved to be a really bad stepmother. I mean, I know there were stepmothers that are really, really good. But she, I think, married -- it's my personal opinion that she married him for his money. And people would say that they could see them out on the, going to the opera and that sort of thing. Whereas my mother, when she needed scissors at school for her Home Ec. class, and they had to bring their own scissors, so they wouldn't buy it for her, so she took her mother's. And this stepmother got really mad at her for taking her (mother's) scissors to school. And she did all sorts of things to her that apparently didn't go well over with my mother, or, well, with my mother. And so she tried several times to run away, because she had a brother that was twenty years older. So, well, apparently at the school, they realized that she was living with her (mother), and they forgave her a lot of stuff because they knew what she was going through. She ended up living with her brother for I don't know how long, until she got married, actually. And the story she says is that she remembers hearing her brother having a big argument with her father about why he wasn't helping to pay for her at least if he couldn't have her in the house, why didn't he help pay for her living with him? Because they were not that well off, so she remembered that part of it.

And she really loved her sister-in-law and her nephew, but she had to do an arranged marriage with my dad, which turned out just fine. Because, though, in an arranged marriage, you don't love somebody at first, she had this marriage that she was forced into, which was not bad for her probably, because she was living with her brother and she couldn't live with her dad. But before he died, he did apparently apologize to her about the fact that he understood what she went through after her mom died. So... anyway, she also had a sister that, anyway, she had an older sister that ran away, so it wasn't just my mother. And I don't know about my uncle. I should have asked him before he died, there's so many things I wished I'd asked before he died. He left home pretty early, I think, pretty early on and came to the United States, because he was born here and just did the railroads and different things like that.

Anyway, so it was an arranged marriage, so this is one really great story that I've got to tell. Okay, so even though they weren't married because of love or anything, I think they still treated each other pretty well. Because I remember her telling this story about -- she's very scared of water, okay -- so in Tacoma, they went out to whatever, is that Deception? Well, anyway, it starts with a D, this bay, and there were a lot of whirlpools there. And he took them out on, one day they went out on a boat, rowboat. He took my mom out there and my mom was, she said she's hanging on for dear life to the side, she's scared to death. But she said it was fine, it was fine, except that they got stuck in a whirlpool, but my dad was very... oh, I forgot to tell you about this, he's a very good swimmer. And he used to swim between islands, so he had really strong arms. So he was able, there were some fishermen out there who wanted to know if they needed help. My dad said, "No, no, I can get us out," or something, and he did. He got them out of this whirlpool by rowing. And so I thought that was pretty cool that at least he took my mom out for some fun. So I don't know what else they did, but anyway, I think it might have been a better life for her in some ways, but, of course, things changed once they were here, and they were so poor.

CC: Well, they were married in Japan around 1940.

MM: Well, assuming that they were married in 1940 and that I'm not a bastard child, but I might be. [Laughs]

CC: Do you know what year they came back to the United States?

MM: In 1940, but I don't actually know, I don't have any pictures of them being married and I don't have the pictures of them being married here, but that's only because I didn't question them about it.

CC: So they came back and they lived in Tacoma?

MM: Yes, they lived in Tacoma, that's why I was born there. And then it was after that that, I figured it out seventeen days after I was born, was Pearl Harbor. And then several months after that, we were in camp.

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